Justin Wilson pulls his helmet off after his Indianapolis 500 qualifying run on May 18. / Matt Dial, The Indianapolis Star

by Diana Penner, USA TODAY Sports

by Diana Penner, USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS - When he's racing, IndyCar ­driver Justin Wilson has to have a clear view of everything in front of him - he has to read the road.

That's no problem for the 34-year-old, who'll be in the middle of the fifth row for Sunday's Indianapolis 500.

It's when he's trying to read a book that things get tricky.

Wilson has dyslexia.

People with dyslexia process written words differently, although it's not about their eyes. They "see" letters and words with distortions, or backwards, or in a variety of other ways that make it difficult for them to understand.

As a result, Wilson told students Tuesday at St. Pius X on the Far Northside of Indianapolis, school was tough for him when he was a kid, and sometimes, other students tried to tell him he was stupid.

That's just not true, Wilson told the students.

"It's not a disease. It's not that you're not smart," he said. "You just learn differently from other people."

Wilson was 13 when he was diagnosed; before that, he had struggled mightily with reading and spelling. After the dyslexia was pinpointed, reading still was hard - it still is, he acknowledged - but now he has strategies to work around it.

When Wilson looks at words on a page, he "sees" the first and the last letters of a word, but the middle letters kind of vanish. His younger brother Stefan, also a race car driver, also has dyslexia, but his brain reverses letters or turns them upside down, Wilson said. Stefan Wilson was 6 years old when he was diagnosed, so he got help much sooner, got ­extra help and didn't have to struggle quite as much in school, Justin Wilson said.

During a question-and-answer period, one student asked Wilson whether dyslexia had been a benefit in any way.

"I do think dyslexia has helped me," he said. "It's pushed me to work harder in everything I do.

"You get a lot of satisfaction out of doing something that's hard," Wilson said. By contrast, some classmates who sailed through schoolwork emerged into adulthood without really having a good work ethic or determination, he said.

"To be forced to work hard back then has helped me to get to this stage."

Diana Penner writes for the Indianapolis Star, a property of Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY